at, ref #536; the HF issues with the FO in this and other accidents is very important and warrants some speculative discussion (Machinbird also, #540). However, without evidence the assertion about the crew’s mental state (belief) and the reasons for it cannot be justified.
The apparent failure of the ‘monitoring’ crew member to intervene is often cited as a factor in accidents. If considered in isolation and with hindsight, this could be labeled as a root cause - as ‘deviant behavior’, which is not necessarily appropriate. To continue discussion on this aspect, but independently of this accident and the emotion associated with this thread, I have started a new thread - Monitoring & Intervention
Stick_Rudder, I'm not an authority on the subject, but family members might not know of its significance if Parasomnia events had occurred, and that would only be an indicator of a tendency. My own event has not been repeated to the best of my knowledge in a span of almost 50 years.
As to whether it was possible to have a pilot function to that level of performance that the Captain exhibited, I guess if you can have a nightmare about an event, you can have a parasomnia event given the right circumstances. The Captain exhibited way too much focus on a single path of action. The conscious mind is exploring alternatives.
He can say he's logged 50000 hours in the space shuttle, doesn't mean it's true.
He has slandered the dead captain multiple times in his posts with zero evidence in the accident report of any berating during this flight. Why would somebody who didn't have an emotional connection with this event or person outright lie and have high enough emotions to contradict the accident report? More than meets they eye hear. Hence my jilted first officer deductions. Unless you believe this capt willfully caused this accident during a power driven, screaming at the fo, extremely high fast approach. But the accident report refutes that premises.
Air India evaded mandatory cockpit training for pilots
Quote:
Air India Ltd did not provide mandatory cockpit training to most of its international flight crew for over two years, violating regulatory norms and which could have potentially led to the Air India Express crash in 2010, according to an internal email. The inquiry into the flight IX-812 crash in Mangalore, on May 2010 which killed 158 people, pointed to poor crew resource management (CRM) as a key reason for the worst crash India had seen in a decade.
CRM training for pilots is primarily meant to improve air safety and focuses on interpersonal communication, leadership and decision making. It was started in 1979 internationally after it was found that most aviation accidents occurred because of human error. In India, CRM training is to be done for all pilots every year, according to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), according to a Mint report by Tarun Shukla.
“The court of inquiry into the Mangalore accident has published its report, wherein inadequate CRM has played a significant role,” AS Soman, Executive Director of Operations and Customer Service, Air India, wrote in a June 3, 2011 email to then airline chairman Arvind Jadhav. “A comparison of the tables in the report forwarded herewith clearly indicates that practically no CRM training was conducted in the operations department between 2007 and 2010.”
The court of inquiry report directly attributes the crash to poor CRM and a lack of “assertive training” for the first officer of flight IX-812, who did not challenge any of the errors made by the commanding pilot. “...the CVR (cockpit voice recorder) recordings reveal low standards of CRM by both pilots... The pilots were not working in harmony...” the email said, quoting the crash report.
Air India Express, the low-cost international arm of Air India, did not have a safety or a training department, and used Air India’s facilities, calling into question if the crew that operated the IX-812 flight complied with all the requirements of the aviation regulator, said Mohan Ranganathan, an Air Safety Expert and Member of the government-appointed Civil Aviation Safety Advisory Council, which was established after the Mangalore crash to review air safety.
“None of the mandatory training has ever been stopped,” an Air India spokesman said.
Ranganathan said the email points out that DGCA’s rules for scheduled transportation was not followed. “How did this also pass muster with the IATA-certified audits?” the international benchmark for safety among airlines, he asked.
The email also said there were indications that records were potentially fudged to portray better results. “Use of registers with no control over entries show instances of mismatching signatures (especially for training captains and senior executives), overwritten dates, altered entries and logging of navigation classes as CRM classes,” the email said. “No CRM manuals were issued to crew. One manual with (outdated) first generation CRM material (was) maintained only for audit purposes.”
International and local audits were conducted recently and “we have not been found wanting in any training”, the Air India spokesman said.
“This is another example of a farce being played out by DGCA when they do safety audits. Every accident India has witnessed since 2000 has identified CRM failure as a major factor,” Ranganathan added. “The two fatal crashes involved the Air India family—Alliance Air (in 2000) and Air India Express. Stating that DGCA has given them (Air India) a clean chit cuts no ice.” He said he was curious why Soman, as the head of operations and safety, allowed such a serious lapse to take place during his tenure.
An Air India official said that the airline was not inferior in any training aspect and dismissed the CRM findings as “petty political bickering between two factions within the airline”.
Air India Express flies typically to West Asia from southern Indian states. It is a subsidiary of Air India run under Air India Charters Ltd and operates 175 international flights and 15 domestic flights every week. The carrier ferried 2.5 million passengers in the year ended March 2011. An audit done last year by DGCA had found that Air India Express did not have a human resources department and needed to lean upon parent Air India for nearly everything, even in situations that required quick decisions, resulting in operational handicaps, Mint reported on 5 December.
“It was surprising to note that even (for) the photocopier, (Air India Express) was dependent on Air India,” the DGCA report said, warning that letters exchanged between Air India and Air India Express indicated “total interference in the working of Air India Charters, which is detrimental to the overall progress and directly infringes on air safety”.
The carrier did not have either a DGCA-approved chief of safety or deputy chief of safety. “The airline seems to have purposely overlooked some deficiencies,” the report had said, citing at least three instances where a pilot made grave errors but was promoted to fly bigger aircraft instead of being penalised.
Top brass from the aviation industry have been named as accused in a complaint filed in the court of the Judicial Magistrate First Class (JMFC) II at Mangalore in connection with the crash of flight IX 812 from Dubai on May 22, 2010 in which 158 lives were lost.
The complaint filed by the 812 Foundation, a trust formed by advocates Yeshwanth Shenoy and Nayana Pai with Triveni Kodkany who lost her mother and husband in the crash to help the victims and bring the guilty to book, names top officials of Air India Limited, Airport Authority of India (AAI) and the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
It alleges that Capt Glusica, who was the commander of flight IX 812, did not meet the eligibility criteria for a Foreign Air Crew Temporary Authorisation (FATA) licence. The DGCA, which is primarily responsible for issuing licences, allegedly failed to verify the Airline Transport Pilot Licence (ATPL) and log book of the pilot-in-command before issuing the FATA licence.
Capt Glusica obtained his B-737-800/900 endorsement on May 22, 2008 and joined Air India Express (AIE) (AIE) on December 15, 2008 during which period he did not fly this type of aircraft. When AIE applied for his FATA, he did not have the 100 hrs on type (B-737-800). Despite this, the DGCA approved the FATA violating section 6, Part V & Schedule II of Aircraft Rules, 1937.
The complaint also maintains that Air India did not provide mandatory cockpit training to most of its international flight crew for over two years, violating regulatory norms. DGCA circular No. 8 of 2009 and CAR mandates Crew Resource Management (CRM) training every year. The Court of Inquiry (COI) report clearly points out inadequate CRM as having played a significant role in the accident. This is acknowledged in an e-mail dated June 3, 2011, written by A S Soman, executive director (operations and customer service) addressed to Arvind Jadhav, former CMD, Air India Express.
Lapses at bajpe airport The complaint quotes a writ petition filed in the Karnataka High Court in 1997 in which it was stated, “Minimum area for stop way is clearly insufficient. The runway distance itself is about 2,400 metres, and even if the area left is most cautiously utilised, what is left is only about 300 metres on each end of the runway. By the prescribed standard, this is far below the required distance needed for an emergency stop way.
“Therefore, the chances of an aircraft that has achieved the decision speed forcing an emergency stop are critically minimised, and the inevitable consequence could be that the plane would come crashing down the hill side from a height of 80-100 metres on either side of the proposed runway.” The Mangalore crash replicated this pattern.
It is further alleged that markings on the runway are wrong. The markings show the availability of 2000 feet of runway when there was actually none available. It is exactly at this point that the pilot made the decision to take off again
